Page 233 - The Chronicles Ser2 (6-10)

terminal to start up. The equipment was slow; having been dormant for Maker knows how long.
Eventually the screen flickered into life and a progress graphic showed that it was loading its equally
ancient operating system.
“I’ve seen history files of these things. They were called “Hard drives” an ancient form of data
storage device; there must be thousands on these shelves alone. And there appears to be another
room next door with a lot more stacked on shelves” Lance said.
“Ancient is the operative word. Take a look at this Terminal it’s running something called Windows
10!” Sandra commented adding “It looks like those things are meant to slot into this thing here”. She
pointed to a box like device with a cable running from it to the terminal. The box thing had two slots
on the top. There was a single line of English print on the box by one of the slots. It read “Hot
Swapping of Drives permitted”. Sandra looked at Lance. He shrugged his shoulders saying
“I’m not sure either, but… hang on I think I have an English Phrase dictionary in the Memory of my
Pad”. He looked up the term and was rewarded with a concise explanation, “Hard drives or panel
circuits can be plugged in and removed with power still applied to the device” he read out loud “That
must mean…” he reached up to the devices on the top shelf and selected two at random “… Put

these into the slots and see what happens” he added. Sandra inserted
one of the devices into one of the slots and pressed a button that lit up
when she did. The screen on the terminal displayed a graphic with a list
of options. She selected using some arrow keys on the keyboard “Open
or Examine files” and pressed the “Enter” key as instructed. The display
changed to a larger window with a list of files and she selected one
called “Junction City incident” and lights flashed on the box as the file
was loaded up. It was a Police report of an incident in a place called
Junction City; Oregon, wherever that had been. It detailed the strange
encounter by one of the City’s Police Patrol vehicles with an individual
who had been found wandering around on a road near the City limits. The Man was completely
naked except for a strange head band that had glowing jewels inset into it. The Officers had thought
the man was intoxicated or under the influence of some drug. They had taken him to a local clinic to
get examined. He was rambling on about having been taken aboard some strange craft by small men
in surgical masks. They had put the head band on him and ordered him to lie on an examination
table. Apparently they had done various despicable things to his body while he had remained
conscious the whole time. He had managed to break free of their control somehow and; while the
men were distracted at something on a screen, escaped from the craft.
“The report has been heavily annotated with numbered points. These correspond to the foot notes
at the end of the report; and we’ve seen that stamped logo elsewhere too” Sandra said. Lance read
some of the annotation footnotes. The Logo Sandra was referring to consisted of the three letters F,
B, and I in the middle of a concentric set of circles. Examples of this had been stamped on other
documents in the room they had come from.
“It would appear that a Government Agency had been tasked to look into the incidents and report
their findings directly to the “President”” Lance announced “That would explain the need for
secrecy. If too many of the reports got out to the General Public… Mass panic could ensue. I wonder
if we could get all these devices and that terminal sent to Lunaris central Archive for the Hive to
interface and analyse the data on them?” he mused aloud.
“You’re right there’s just too much for us to check ourselves. I think I know someone who might be
able to help” Sandra replied and dialled a code into her personal coms unit…

Waking up in a strange place at the wrong time
Arthur woke slowly; he found that he was unable to move. He recognised this and his
surroundings from one of his nightmares. He was back in that room on that table. He could hear the
clicking and humming voices of his captors nearby. He was naked apart from the system of restraints
that kept him from moving. With effort he found he could move his head slightly from side to side.